Terror takes a front seat

President Barack Obama wasn’t shy about invoking Osama bin Laden’s killing during the 2012 campaign — but when it comes to his larger approach to terrorism he’s pursued a policy of speaking softly and ordering lots of drone strikes.

That delicate balance was shattered by the Boston Marathon attack, thrusting a downplayed anti-terror campaign into the spotlight and the issue of terrorism to the top of Obama’s second-term priorities, at least in the short term.

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Obama, whose 2008 election was propelled by opposition to the Iraq War, has jettisoned the clash-of-civilizations rhetoric favored by George W. Bush — even as he’s embraced or ramped up many of the same anti-terror methods — the deployment of unmanned drones, warrant-less wiretapping, the open-ended use of Guantanamo Bay to warehouse potential terrorists.

Those two seemingly contradictory strategies are bound by a single motive: Obama wanted to go after terrorists without allowing the War on Terror to devour a second presidency, hoping to put it on the back burner behind domestic issues, the economy and his top foreign policy priority of rebuilding America’s image around the world.

“He’s got this disconnect between his body language, his emotions and his actions,” says former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, who thinks Obama has charted the right course in the wake of the Boston attacks so far. “It’s a reflection of how he wants to prioritize the public discussion… He’s been pretty tough and good on anti-terror policy but he doesn’t want to talk about it that much… He doesn’t want this to be the conversation, he doesn’t want to lean in to it emotionally like [we] did.

“That will have to change now, obviously,” he added.

Obama and his advisers have counseled moderation and engagement to deal with the challenge of radicalization over the years, but the marathon attacks are already spurring demands for a tougher response. The standard Obama approach doesn’t seem like it’s going to work — there’s deep concern about the independent, homegrown nature of the attackers and key Congressional Republicans immediately criticized the administration for its decision not to classify the captured bomber as an enemy combatant.

“Even if it turns out that these guys aren’t foreign-directed, that you had at least one American citizen launching a homegrown terrorist attack on American soil, that changes the game,” says Matt Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman under Attorney General Eric Holder.

“For years, the president and experts have warned about this kind of homegrown terrorism, coming from communities in our midst, but it hasn’t happened and the public didn’t really pay that much attention to the threat… The issue of radicalization of our own people is now a reality, and that’s something this administration has feared for a long time,” he added.

In statements to the press, and in his speech at the memorial service for the three people killed at the marathon last week, Obama has taken pains to avoid casting the attack as part of a larger conflict, warning people not to draw “premature” conclusions from the reports surfacing about the Chechen brothers accused of detonating a pair or crude but murderous homemade pressure-cooker bombs.